


Out of Dust

by periferal



Category: RWBY
Genre: Autistic Nora, Autistic Ren, Eventual Romance, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Polyamory, Sadness, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2018-07-18 01:59:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7294936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/periferal/pseuds/periferal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a rewrite of the original Out of Dust, which is incomplete.<br/>---</p><p>Pyrrha is dead. Between this traumatic event and Ren, Nora and Jaune's setting out with Ruby to go find Ozpin (or maybe just Salem, who knows), a period of about three months or so is implied to have canonically happened. </p><p>This a version of the immediate aftermath.</p><p>This will have as an endgame pairing Nora/Ren/Jaune.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flight

Jaune was drowning. Or at least he assumed that drowning would feel something like this, a slow tightening of his chest as it became harder and harder to draw breath. She was gone, well and truly gone. He’d known it from the moment Qrow had returned, Ruby in his arms, as he approached the wide-open space where the survivors of the battle were gathered. But he’d hoped that maybe that gut-twisting anxiety was just that, anxiety, natural fear exacerbated by the fact that he had been left helpless, stuck far out in an abandoned part of Vale, while Pyrrha went and played the hero, doing her best to save Ozpin. 

Apparently that too had not quite succeeded. 

“I’m sorry kid,” Qrow said, his tone oddly gentle, or maybe sympathetic, Jaune wasn’t exactly in the best mindset to tell. “Pyrrha’s dead.”

Whatever denial he had constructed in his own head shattered, and he stood numbly staring at Ruby’s uncle, unable to think of words or even really action. 

He looked without thinking out at the tower, which was partially collapsed. The CCTS would be down, then, some distant part of him noted. The Grimm Dragon, which had been circling for so long that he had almost grown used to it, was frozen atop it. “What happened?” he finally managed to force out, deciding that he was asking about the dragon, not... her. 

Qrow decided to answer both the question he meant to ask and the one he did not want to ask. “I don’t know, Cinder killed her, I think, before whatever it is Ruby did presumably killed her and froze the dragon.” As he was talking about Ruby, he sounded almost proud. Nostalgic too, maybe. 

“Cinder’s dead?” Jaune asked, and Qrow nodded. 

“Probably. Though you never know for certain with these people, they have a nasty tendency to not be as dead as you want them to be, or so Ozpin warns me.”

Jaune couldn’t tell if he was relieved or angry, knowing this. He knew, in the part of his brain that wasn’t concentrating on the fact that he felt like he was drowning, that if Cinder best Pyrrha she would be able to kill him easily. But most of him, the part of him that could think of little else besides how much it felt like his own ribs were trying to suffocate him wanted to hurt Cinder in exchange for... well. 

The tight feeling increased, and it became more and more difficult for him to draw breath. Distantly, he wondered if this is what it meant to have a panic attack.

 

Ren had to physically restrain Nora from rushing over to Jaune as he collapsed. He wanted to let her, he wanted to follow her, but he could feel the injuries his aura hadn’t quite healed entirely protest every time he did something more drastic than sit up a little. “He will be okay,” he said. Had Nora wanted to break out of his grip, she could have, but instead she collapsed again. 

“No he won’t,” she said, “I don’t know if anything will be okay for a long time.”

They watched as Sun rushed to Jaune. The faunus picked the fallen boy up, holding him much like Qrow was holding Ruby. “We really should evacuate, now,” Sun said. He looked significantly at Ren. “Are you two okay to walk?”

“I think so,” Nora said, and she got up again. This time, Ren didn’t restrain her. He pushed himself to his feet with painstaking care, wincing as something knocked his still slightly messed up left leg. 

He limped towards the airship, following the rest of the evacuating students. He looked behind himself. Sun and and Qrow were walking together, still holding Jaune and Ruby. They were speaking in low voices. For once Ren had no particular desire to eavesdrop.

The process of getting on the ship and finding a place to sit took much less time than Ren wanted. He wanted it to be a longer series of tasks in order for him to have an excuse for distraction. Nora was silent, and this was wrong, it didn't fit how things were usually. Even in sorrow, Nora spoke, and here she wasn't.

The interior of the airship was not very ornate. Nora sat down on the nearest free seat, placing her weapon at her feet. Ren sat next to her, still willing her to start babbling.

“It’s not okay,” she whispered instead. She turned to look at him. She was frowning, brow furrowed, and Ren recognized her expression as ‘close to rage.’ “None of this- things are supposed to be better now! We went to Beacon to stop bad things, not do nothing as people die  _ again _ .” Ren regretted his wish for her to babble then. Not because of the words, he agreed with the words. No, he regretted wishing that because she was now close to the kind of rage that would lead her to banging her hands against herself, and there had been far too much hurt already that day.

“We were not useless.” He tried desperately to sound convinced of his own words. “We fought Grimm, and killed many.”

“Not the right ones!” Nora pressed her face into Ren’s shoulder. He leaned against her, putting an arm around her shoulder in an almost hug. “It wasn't enough, in the end.”

“No, it wasn't,” Ren conceded. He was whispering. 

“Do you know where we’re going?” Nora asked into his shoulder. Instead of replying, Ren shook his head, hoping she would know his negative without him having to speak. Words were thick in his throat, all of a sudden. They did that sometimes.

 

Nora resisted to the urge to grab at the fabric of Ren’s coat and just hold on for a long time and not let him go anywhere. He was not allowed to go anywhere but she also wasn't sure if he would be going still and quiet like he did sometimes. She was feeling quiet in her mouth and that was strange for her, so she assumed that he would be dealing with that too. If he was going still and quiet it might be a time where touch was strange for him.

Or maybe not, she amended as she felt the arm around her shoulder tighten. She shifted her head so she had her head pressed into the crook of his neck instead of his shoulder and reached for his hand. This would probably be the extent of any possible cuddling considering they were in a transport airship, but it was still nice to have proof under her fingers that Ren wasn’t going anywhere.

Something occurred to her, and she asked “Where do you think Jaune is?” before what he had looked like last time she saw him came back to her suddenly. She felt Ren tense up and she let go of him. He gave her a tiny smile as he noticed she was doing her best to give him space, though she did keep holding his hand.

“I don't know, I think he’s fine,” Ren says. 

He sounded more dubious than was comforting to Nora, and she bit at her lip before declaring, “Okay, we’re going to find him!”

Only then did Nora really look around where they were sitting. The interior of the airship was the same generic sort as the kind that had brought all the students to Vale in the first place, but there was a set of doors set into what she assumed was the back of the space, meaning that the space, where all the fleeing students were sitting, did not take up the entire airship. The pilot’s area at the front of the ship was easily accessible, but these rooms were not. 

She stood up to get a little better view, looking for Jaune or maybe Sun. When she found neither person, she poked Ren in the shoulder. “We’re finding him,” she said, and he nodded.

He opened his mouth, then frowned, closing it again. She squeezed his hand, which she was still holding even though she was standing, and he got up. 

The two of them made their way towards the door, which Nora assumed Ren assumed was a medbay, maybe. That or somewhere else they'd put the more badly injured people for care, which even though Jaune had seemed physically fine he'd probably counted as.

She was leading, so she was the one to knock. She felt both incredibly nervous and incredibly awkward doing so, mostly because of the hopefully untrue conviction that she was acting very stupidly. 

The door slid open automatically, presumably on some sort of voice command. 

Nora had been half right. This area, which appeared to be normally a sort of first class area of the airship was currently acting as a temporary medbay, with what looked to be prefab hospital beds + equipment set up in two rows in the small space. There were six in all. 

She recognized Ruby, looking terrifyingly small without her scythe, lying still and silent in the nearest bed on the left. A man whom Nora only vaguely recognized from just after the battle sat near her bed.

“Hey you two,” she heard Sun Wukong say in a low voice, “he’s over here.” The monkey faunus was sitting between the second and third beds on the left, both occupied.

Jaune was still unconscious, and Nora, still dragging Ren, stopped short at the foot of his bed. 

He did not look sick. He looked fine, really, which was relieving because it did not fit the pale and awful wasting that Nora’s mind had conjured, in her sudden panic at remembering Jaune’s collapse on the pavilion, after she was no longer in task mode and focused on getting into the airship and away from the city of awful happenings.

It also meant he didn’t look small, or wrong, like Ruby did. He was sleeping like he would in the dorm, oddly peaceful, untroubled. But this was worrying now, instead of reassuring as it had been then. The circumstances had changed enough that this sort of peacefulness was out of place.

“When do you think he’s going to wake up?” Nora asked in a whisper.

“Soon,” Sun replied, smiling reassuringly, “soon.”

 


	2. Something

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a long, long time, here we go, a second chapter. 
> 
> I swear to god these three are going to end up making out eventually, they're just a tad traumatized at the moment.

Soon turned out to be about half an hour. Nora and Ren waited on either side of the bed, sitting in the same uncomfortable chairs as the man waiting by Ruby, who now appeared to be asleep. Jaune’s eyes fluttered like that of some character out of a really terrible black-and-white movie, and then they opened, flicking every which way, searching for... something.

“Pyrrha?” he muttered, and Nora’s felt something in her chest clench. “Pyrrha!” His eyes widened, and slowly, carefully, he sat up. “Where...?” he asked, looking at Nora and Ren in turn. Before she could respond, he slumped, all of a sudden, shoulders curled in on themselves. “Oh, right,” he whispered dully. His eyes were now half closed.

“I’m sorry Jaune,” Sun said gently. 

Jaune full-body flinched. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he finally muttered, mostly to himself.

“I know.” Nora expected Sun to move to touch him in an attempt to comfort, but instead the faunus boy just hung back, watching.

To her only sort of surprise, it was Ren who reached out to put a hand on Jaune’s shoulder, before Nora could bring herself to, even though she was usually the more touchy person. “Would you like a hug?” he asked, the expression on his face serious to a degree that might have been comedic a few hours before.

“I don’t know if there are enough hugs to make me feel less sucky,” Jaune answered, “but yes. Hugs are good.” He pushed the thin hospital blanket off his legs, standing up on the side of the bed where Ren was sitting. “That wasn’t really necessary, you know,” he muttered, looking at Sun. He looked more embarrassed than angry, though. While he was saying this, Ren stood. He pulled Jaune into a tight hug. 

“We were concerned that you had been injured,” Sun said, “and we needed to put you somewhere until you woke up, and the seats in the main area of the airship aren’t exactly comfortable to lie down on.”

At the first part of Sun’s words, Jaune pulled away from Ren suddenly. “No, I wasn’t hurt,” he whispered, clenching his fists tightly all of a sudden. “She... she made sure I wouldn’t get hurt, before went off and...” his voice trailed off. His shoulders slumped, and he looked away from all three of them, sitting back down on the bed. “This is stupid, I shouldn’t be in here, I’m not  _ hurt _ .” 

“He’s right,” Sun said. “Jaune, you feel okay enough to walk?” he asked. Jaune nodded. Nora wanted to protest, because the way that Jaune had collapsed had to mean there was something wrong, but she couldn’t think of a way of saying that without sounding stupid. “Your clothes are in the closet at the far end of the room. Good luck, the three of you.” Sun gave Nora a smile that made her think he was much more familiar with what Jaune was going through than he was saying. 

 

After Jaune changed, the three of them left the makeshift medbay and returned to where Ren and Nora had been sitting.

“I think you should have stayed a little longer,” she finally said. “Just, you know, so you can be checked.”

“I’m fine,” Jaune repeated brusquely. “Or, not hurt, anyway. You guys were actually more involved in the fighting, what about you?”

“We’re alright,” Ren answered for Nora. “Or at least, our auras are taking care of anything still wrong. Right?”

“Yeah.” 

-

The ride passed uneventfully. No Grimm attacks, despite the general attitude of vague upset that pervaded the cabin, which Ren morosely credited to the fact that most of the Grimm in the area were probably attacking the city. 

Upon reaching Patch, Ren barely listened to Qrow beyond what room they would be staying in. There was an apology somewhere in his voice, but Ren had already shifted focus back to Jaune and Nora. 

She was still too quiet. He was just-- this was going to be difficult. 

Ren imagined himself crushing his own grief into a tiny, tiny ball. He could deal with that later. For now, his friends were the priority. 

If it meant he would have to talk a little more, he could deal with that. Just a little. “How long has it been since you last ate?” he asked both of them at once. 

They were in their room now. Jaune sat cross-legged on the floor, staring intently at an invisible crack on the ceiling. Nora was curled into Ren’s side on one of the two beds. 

“Whenever you ate last probably,” Jaune said without looking at either of them. Nora nodded against Ren’s side. 

“Okay,” Ren said. “Okay.” He couldn’t force either of them to eat and he didn’t want to get up, either. It was nice, just sitting here with Nora. 

He resisted just reaching down and touching Jaune’s hair. It would be strange, and he didn’t need to confirm his friend’s continued existence that badly, right?  
“I don’t really want to eat right now,” Jaune said. “You know?”  
“Yeah,” Ren said. “I know.”  
“I should’ve done something,” Jaune said. He was still looking at the invisible crack. “She asked me to protect her.”

“She was the hero, Jaune,” Ren said. He was trying mostly to explain it to himself.

“What does that make me, then?”   
“I don’t know!” Nora’s hands twisted so tightly in Ren’s coat that he could feel it. He held his hands clenched in his lap, looking at neither of them. “Sometimes, you do everything right and people still die! Sometimes, to protect--to protect people, you die. Sometimes that’s just what happens.” He hit his hands against his legs as punctuation. 

Jaune twisted around to look at him. Ren could see the surprise on his face. “You’re crying,” Jaune whispered. 

Ren brought a hand up to his face. His eyes were wet. “Huh.”

“She kissed me,” Jaune blurted. He was shaking. Instead of the invisible crack he was now looking at a point somewhere above Ren’s head. “Maybe I should have known--should have known that marked the end. Or marked something. I should have--.” He crashed his head against the side of the mattress. It bounced a little. 

“Weren’t you guys... together-together for a while?” Nora asked, her voice muffled in Ren’s sweater. 

“No,” Jaune said. “No we weren’t.”

 

“I don’t get it.” Nora broke the silence. She was no longer pressing her face into Ren’s jacket, though she was still holding onto his arm. “I thought you guys were a thing.”

“Yeah, well, I guess that’s not how that turned out, is it?” 

“Ren and I aren’t really something,” Nora said. There was something she needed to explain but her mouth was getting in the way of her words. She wasn’t used to missing words like this, but the everything of the past day making something easy difficult. “Do you want to sit on the bed with us?” That wasn’t it, but it was something she wanted. Even though he was just on the floor Jaune was very far away right now. 

She wanted to pretend this was their dorm room and that Pyrrha would return from studying or training or  _ somewhere _ any moment. It would work for a few second and then she would look away from Jaune or Ren and see the night sky and the woods through the window.

“I guess Qrow thinks you guys are something.” Jaune pushed himself to his feet with a groan. “Or maybe there were only two beds in here anyway.”

He sat on the edge of the mattress, his back to the both of them. 

“You and Pyrrha were more of a something,” Nora said. “I’m sorry.”

She hid her face in Ren’s jacket again.

Jaune exhaled. “I don’t think I can sleep right now,” he said. 

Ren reached out towards Jaune, a tiny gesture he probably didn’t notice. Nora only did because he moved the arm she was partly holding on to. 

Ren dropped his hand to his side again.

“Do you need a hug?”

The noise Jaune made was the weirdo offspring of laughter and crying. “Yeah, actually,” he said. 

“I have two arms,” Nora said. 

Jaune sat cross legged next to Nora. She pulled him closer to herself, so she could hold on to his shirt without moving her her head from Ren’s shoulder.

Ren put his arms around them both. 

He muttered something that sounded like “You’re real.”

“Yeah,” Jaune said. “I am.”   


“That’s good,” Ren said. 

Nora closed her eyes.


	3. Vigil

It was morning, and Jaune, Ren, and Nora had yet to appear downstairs. Ruby was still unconscious, and Yang was understandably traumatized, but from what Qrow had observed, the remnants of JNPR were all right in body, at least. 

“Do you want to go check on them?” Tai asked. He was staring distractedly into the fridge, apparently stuck on what to eat.

“Do you think I should?” Qrow was sitting at the table, that ever-present bottle of something alcoholic (he hadn’t bothered to check, this time) sitting in front of him. 

Tai turned from the fridge to look at him. “I think their situation’s the most familiar to either of us,” he said. “Ruby might’ve inherited her mother’s... gifts, and RWBY may be scattered but--no one’s died, for them, at least.”

Qrow stared at his friend. “You don’t mean...?” 

“Of course,” Tai said. “Look, Summer’s death fucked us both up, but if there’s some good we can get out of it--you understand where they’re coming from.”

“Why don’t you do it, then?” Qrow was still far too sober to go about dredging up those memories for the sake of teenagers he knew entirely through his nieces. 

Tai shut the door of the fridge. The sound of it startled Qrow more than he was going to admit. “You’re honestly better equipped for this kind of thing than I am,” Tai said. “I’ve been thinking about how I’m supposed to talk to Yang when she’s up for it and nothing’s coming--and I know you at least can talk about Summer without crying.”

“I don’t talk about her. That’s my secret.” Qrow drained the bottle. Perhaps if he stared at it long enough he could will it to refill itself. 

“Just check on them,” Tai said. “Don’t go off in your animal shape just yet.”

“What, you don’t want me bringing them bad luck?” Despite his sarcasm, Qrow got up, pushing his chair a little too forcefully back into the table. 

Tai sighed. “You know I’ve never gone in for that kind of superstition,” he said. 

“Your funeral,” Qrow said. Tai’s faith in him was baffling. 

 

Qrow knocked on the guest room where he had lodged Ren, Nora, and Jaune the night before. It wasn’t all that surprising that no one answered. 

“Hey,” he said, just loud enough that it would carry through the door. “It’s morning.” Still nothing. 

He gently pushed the door in. He knew it would be unlocked--most of the internal doors in this house didn’t have any. 

“You were more right than you knew,” Qrow said, even though Tai wasn't there. 

Ren and Jaune were curled around each other, Nora holding tightly to both of them. All three seemed fast asleep. They were fully clothed, and hadn’t bothered to get under the covers. Obviously, they had intended to stay awake. 

“Hey, guys,” he said. He wouldn’t try to hard to wake them, but he knew from experience that too much sleep at times like this just made things worse. And they all probably smelled like death. 

“Pyrrha?” 

Jaune’s eyes were suddenly open, darting rapidly around the room. “I’m sorry, kid,” Qrow said. He was repeating himself, he realized. He might be repeating himself in this vein for a while. “Pyrrha’s dead.”

The small, drowned animal noise Jaune made reminded Qrow too much of Tai for anyone’s good. “Right,” he finally said, mostly in Nora’s shoulder but just loud enough that Qrow could make it out. It helped to have a strange bird’s hearing, sometimes. Sometimes it didn’t. 

“You mean to fall asleep?” he asked. 

“No,” Jaune said. 

Ren and Nora woke almost at the same time. The three teens disentangled themselves and sat, watching Qrow. Neither Ren and Nora had yet to speak. From what Qrow remembered, that was unusual for only one of the two of them. 

“Hello,” Qrow said. 

“Is Ruby awake?” It was Ren who was asking, to Qrow’s surprise. 

“No, not yet,” Qrow said. 

He nodded. “Jaune, are you hungry?” Ren also looked at Nora as he spoke. 

“No,” Jaune said. Nora just shook her head.

“We have food downstairs,” Qrow said quietly. “For when you are.”

He closed the door. No one seemed about to hurt themselves, he decided, and there wasn’t much else he could do. What was he supposed to say? “Hey, kids, I also lost a member of my team at a young age, and my sister’s fucked off to nowhere”? Yeah, right. 

He stared at the closed door. 

“I need a drink,” he said to no one in particular. Tai wouldn’t be too happy. He usually tolerated Qrow, but recently he had started getting those crinkles around his eyes when he saw him with a bottle before noon. 

Or at any time, really. But Qrow could still function, and Tai hadn’t said anything yet, so he could keep his disapproving silences to himself.

“That’s just what you think,” Tai said, his voice coming from behind Qrow. Qrow jumped a little, before relaxing into the hug.

“Are you telepathic?” he asked.

“No?” Tai said. “I was talking about the drinking.”

“Ah.” Qrow sighed. “I’m fine.”

“Sure you are. Mostly, I just think you should be sober for the sake of the traumatized kids living in our attic. At least temporarily.”

Qrow stared at Tai’s arms, instead of his face, which he couldn’t see because he was behind him. “That sounds difficult,” he said. “I don’t know if I could manage that.”

“Just try, please?” Tai asked. “You can fuck off to the woods and fall asleep in the snow if you really, really need to, but try?”

“Fine,” Qrow said. “Fine.”

It wasn’t going to work. It never worked. But that didn’t matter.


End file.
